HTC Titan II review: Bigger is not always better

The HTC Titan II is a new Windows phone that packs a gigantic 4.7-inch super LCD display and a 16-megapixel camera, the highest resolution we've seen on a phone. It runs the latest version of the Windows Phone 7 OS (Mango), Version 7.5, and can run on AT&T's high-speed 4G LTE network as well as its HSPA+ 4G network. The specs sound impressive, but on this phone, bigger isn't necessarily better.

AT&T introduced the Titan II on April 8 at a price of $200 with a two-year contract after rebates. I've been using a retail version of the phone for about a day and liked the size of the display, but I didn't find it to be especially sharp or brilliant. And while pictures and videos taken with the phone's high-megapixel camera were sharp, they didn't strike me as noticeably better that those taken with other high-end smart phones. On the other hand, the Mango OS is a plus, greatly enhancing the ability to interact with our network-connected world, compared to earlier Windows phones.

There's a price to pay for the oversize screen. Living up to its name, the Titan II is a brick, measuring 5.2 x 2.7 x 0.5 inches and weighing in at a hefty 5.0 ounces. Battery staying-power isn't its strong suit. I had to bring the phone back to the charger after a half-day of play, suggesting that the Titan II's healthy-size 1,730mAh lithium ion battery may need vitamins.

Here are my first impressions of the HTC Titan II:

Display. While the Titan II's LCD is among the biggest displays we've seen on any mobile device claiming to be a phone, it's not among the sharpest—about 199 pixels per inch—which means small type doesn't appear as crisp as is does on, say, the iPhone (330 ppi) or the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx (256 ppi). And it appears noticeably duller than the 217ppi AMOLED display of its Mango cousin on AT&T, the Nokia Lumia 900, which sells for $100. Still, the Titan's generous screen real estate does make it a better choice for reading e-books and Web-content.

Camera. CR's imaging engineers are currently assessing the phone's camera performance. The Titan II has two to three times the megapixels of any other smart-phone camera, producing stills with an incredible resolution of 4640 x 3480 pixels. This may translate into better-quality prints, but on Titan's modest-resolution display, they didn't appear noticeably sharper or better than pics taken with other high-end smart phones. The same was true of videos, which are limited to 720p resolution by the Windows Phone operating system.

I didn't have time to take images off the phone for further evaluation, and Microsoft doesn't exactly make it easy. The Titan II (like the Lumia 900) automatically compresses high-resolution stills and videos uploaded to Skydrive and Facebook. And in order to sideload camera content to your computer, you have to download and install the Zune software from Microsoft, which is optimized for Windows computers. Mac users may have to download extra components from Microsoft before they can offload content to their computers.

The camera was responsive, with a short shutter lag, and it has lots of impressive features. These include face detection, image stabilization, flicker adjustment, and a panoramic mode. It can take a burst of five photos with a single press of the phone's hard camera button, handy for action shots. I'm not big on distorting images with the special effects the Titan II offers (such as sepia, gray-scale, and vintage). And you'll see more-impressive camera features coming on HTC's upcoming Evo 4G LTE and One S phones, which will let you adjust its duration Burst shots from between 5 to 99 pictures, as well as let you capture still pictures as you're shooting a video.

Controls. The overall experience of using Titan II is largely determined by the Mango operating system, which has a number of good points, as I highlighted in my review of the Lumia 900. These include the Me and People Hub apps for interacting with social networks and the Local Scout app, which lists the details of nearby restaurants, shops, events, and other places of interest, often with reviews from Citysearch and directions via Bing Maps.

I appreciated several features HTC added to make and take calls with greater ease, such as Quiet on ring, Flip for speaker, Flip to mute, and Pocket mode, a setting that automatically turns up the phone's ringer when it senses the phone is in your pocket or other sound-muffling environment.

Bottom line: The HTC Titan does have a bountiful display that may appeal to avid e-book readers. But it's bulkier and much more expensive than the Nokia Lumia 900. It's also not clear that it can take better pictures, despite having twice as many megapixels as the Lumia and other phones.

—Mike Gikas